Maurice Obstfeld

Maurice Obstfeld is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. He is well known for his work in international economics and is among the most influential economists in the world.

Obstfeld joined Berkeley in 1989 as a professor, following appointments at Columbia (1979-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard between 1989 and 1991.

He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1979, following degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge. In 2014-2015 he was a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, and from 2015-2018 he served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Before that, Obstfeld served as an honorary adviser to the Bank of Japan’s Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies.

Among Professor Obstfeld's honors are the Frank Graham Lecture at Princeton, the inaugural Mundell-Fleming Lecture of the International Monetary Fund, the Bernhard Harms Prize and Lecture of the Kiel Institute for World Economy, the L. K. Jha Memorial Lecture at the Reserve Bank of India, and the Richard T. Ely Lecture of the American Economic Association.

Obstfeld is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is active as a distinguished fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Most recently, Obstfeld joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., as a nonresident senior fellow. He has authored or co-authored ten books, most recently publishing Meeting Globalization's Challenges in 2019.